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Jonah Edelman

We owe our kids universal pre-school

Oklahoma is one of the leading states in providing students like Tre free, full-day pre-school. And the results are already paying off: according to a 2005 study, Oklahoma kids that went through pre-school showed vocabulary gains 28% higher than those of children without pre-school, and math gains 44% higher than non-pre-school kids. And we know that high-quality pre-school doesn’t just mean higher scores in elementary school. A now famous study in Ypsilanti, Michigan put low-income African-American children through two years of high-quality pre-school and at the same time recruited a control group from the same demographic who received no pre-school. The researchers checked back in when the children turned 40 and the results were stunning. Without any other interventions, the pre-school group was more likely to have graduated high school and less likely to have committed a violent crime. They also earned more money and were more likely to be employed.

But despite the powerful evidence of the life-changing and cost-saving potential of high-quality early childhood education only 59% of our poorest four-year-olds are in pre-kindergarten, compared to 90% of our country’s wealthiest kids. This hurts those kids’ futures and it hurts the U.S. I think we can all agree that our students need to be more, not less, prepared for life and for the workforce.

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And by third grade, all studies show, the “benefits” of pre-K go away for the target demographic. This is about the birth rate dropping in 2010 among Latino immigrants. The babies not born in 2010 will not be asking for bilingual pre-k services in 2014. A dramatic drop like what is coming could lead to cries to end Head Start altogether. This is an attempt to save jobs for educrats.

Without any other interventions, the pre-school group was more likely to have graduated high school and less likely to have committed a violent crime.

Wow. High bar, there …

ThePrimordialOrderedPair on February 16, 2013 at 4:23 PM

I don’t buy it. I have a fourteen year old and a five year old. My husband and I made a deal that I wouldn’t work the first five years. And it has been hard. The five year gap in work also has made it hard to find work, but I digress.

My first child never went to day care, and my second child went 3 hours a week, because she begged at three because her neighbor friend went. They both went into kindergarten ahead of the class and stayed a head of the class. I volunteer at my five year olds class and I asked her teacher what differentiated the successful kids from the kids lagging behind. It wasn’t preschool. It was parent participation.

A now famous study in Ypsilanti, Michigan put low-income African-American children through two years of high-quality pre-school and at the same time recruited a control group from the same demographic who received no pre-school.

“our children”? This just talks about one demographic and whether they can manage to graduate high school and their likelihood for committing a violent crime as the measures. How is that “our children” and how does it relate to normal people who don’t expect look at pre-school as some sort of way of keeping their kids from becoming violent criminals?

The lowest common denominator is not the fulcrum about which all of society is shaped … not in a sane society, at any rate.

Socialist solutions have a fantastic track record of improving the lives of everyone. The Kibbutzim have been a great success especially in the area of child rearing, and Headstart has worked wonders for millions of Children

…except that darn HHS study which showed program like Head Start to have no lasting effects, and thus a waste of money.

This is all about getting more public employee union members. Also progressives have fantasized for a century about eliminating the retrograde influence of parents. If the socialist system doesn’t have partial custody of the children until they’re six, they might become reactionaries against the collective. The toddlers must learn from the moment they can understand speech: “The Party is mother, the party is father, all allegiance belongs to the party”(TM: Khmer Rouge).

Maybe the poor struggling minorities should reconsider having babies when they’re 15 years old. And make sure daddy hangs around for more than a few months. Lack of free pre-school isn’t the problem. Parents with the maturity of a pre-schoolers is the problem.

We OWE our children a primarily debt free nation and the opportunity to succeed or fail on their own with as little government interference as possible.
Individual parents owe their children a quality education. Asking others to foot the bill prevents parents from doing so, creates a negative influence on personal responsibility by arguing others are responsible for children’s educations, and allows education to become daycare.

Years ago when my oldest was 3 or 4, we were at a neighborhood picnic. I was talking to an older woman, retired teacher from the good old days when education actually took place in schools. She was watching the way my son was behaving and interacting when she said, “You stay home, don’t you? I can always tell.”

Interesting that she didn’t ask what preschool he attended. Funny, that.

We owe our children good parenting, not ushering them off to institutionalized babysitting as soon as we get a chance.

melle1228 on February 16, 2013 at 4:25 PM

^^^

Winner, right there.

But, of course, the government doesn’t trust you to buy your own health care, own guns, spend/save your own money. They sure aren’t going to trust you to raise your own children. Let alone educate them. At least according to progressive standards.

The earlier they get kids in school, the earlier they can get their hooks in them.

Preschool, schmeschool. They’re too flipping young to learn anything scholastic at that age. And to HELL with the idea of it being universal! I’m already paying for K-12 education for everyone else’s kids…

Preschool, schmeschool. They’re too flipping young to learn anything scholastic at that age. And to HELL with the idea of it being universal! I’m already paying for K-12 education for everyone else’s kids…

MelonCollie on February 16, 2013 at 4:59 PM

Each child is different, each child learns differently and at different speeds. Saying children are too young to learn is a cop out. Some will be too young, some will already be more advanced than what is offered.

That said, I do not think government should be involved in school at all, not even k-12.

Older generations didn’t have much in the way of preschool, yet they somehow managed to design and build Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, the atomic bomb, the SR-71, put men on the moon, create Silicon Valley, etc.

Universal pre-school is simply a full-employment act for teachers and administrators.

And by third grade, all studies show, the “benefits” of pre-K go away for the target demographic. This is about the birth rate dropping in 2010 among Latino immigrants. The babies not born in 2010 will not be asking for bilingual pre-k services in 2014. A dramatic drop like what is coming could lead to cries to end Head Start altogether. This is an attempt to save jobs for educrats.

Sekhmet on February 16, 2013 at 4:31 PM

Maybe we should redact that pesky HHS study.

…except that darn HHS study which showed program like Head Start to have no lasting effects, and thus a waste of money.

This is all about getting more public employee union members.

theCork on February 16, 2013 at 4:39 PM

Dern that HHS study anyway.

Besides, the federal gubmint has no business being in public education to begin with.

Progressive education has two parents, Prussia and John Dewey. The kindergarten was transplanted into the United States from Prussia in the nineteenth century…One of the core tenets of the early kindergartens was the dogma that “the government is the true parent of the children, the state is sovereign over the family.” The progressive followers of John Dewey expanded this program to make public schools incubators of a national religion. They discarded the militaristic rigidity of the Prussian model, but retained the aim of indoctrinating children. The methods were informal, couched in the sincere desire to make learning “fun,” relevant,” and “empowering.” The self-esteem obsession that saturates our schools today harks back to the Deweyan reforms from before World War II. But beneath the individualistic rhetoric lies a mission for democratic social justice, a mission Dewey himself defined as a religion. For other progressives, capturing children in schools was part of the larger effort to break the backbone of the nuclear family, the institution most resistant to political indoctrination.

Public policy assumes, and needs no persuasion, that education attainment is a good to be promoted. The same assumption does not hold for family intactness. However:

Family intactness is roughly as important as high school education and more important than college education in influencing outcomes of public policy interest.…

Influence of family intactness on need & dependency

Family intactness is the most important factor (or shares the place of greatest importance) in determining an area’s dependence on welfare programs that target organic poverty:
–Receipt of food stamps,
–Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and state welfare transfers,
–Supplemental Security Income transfers, and
–Prime-age adult public healthcare recipiency.

Family intactness has the second-largest influence on overall diminishment of prime-age female, and child, poverty.

Family intactness has the strongest attenuating influence on teenage out-of-wedlock birth, itself a source of economic hardship.

On Germany and homeschooling–I wrote up the Romeike case the other day. They are a family seeking political asylum in the U.S. due to persecution in Germany for their homeschooling. The DOJ wants to send them back.

2. Banning homeschooling doesn’t infringe on religious freedom, because not all families homeschool for religious reasons and not all Christians choose to homeschool. (This is the same angle we’ve seen played in Obamacare—the Obama administration asserting that religious freedom applies only to churches and not to choices made by individual Christians according to their personal beliefs).